DSM Speaks Audio Tour with Emmett Phillips, Community Member

Run Time: 1:22
Recorded by Emmett Phillips, CultureALL Community Ambassador / 2022

As I sit in this pose and wallow in my woes, with drainage from eyes and nose, dripping down knees and bows. This descent seems slow. Feeling vulnerable and exposed. No balance of highs and lows, head down, my eyes are closed. Envisioning months ago when Corina was still breathing. My family still grieving, in desperate need of healing. I’m hurting yet still working, tormented, and still searching for stillness, with pain lurking in shadows, I’m still learning to mourn. Shunning feelings of scorn, all the potential unborn. Lamenting loss of a life, rejecting all the advice from those seeking to help. I’d rather sit here and melt. Sinking in puddles of pity, thinking no one will get me. What’s the remedy when Grim Reaper ruins revelry and ghosts congratulate me on victories they will never see. I sit alone in this pose, please let me be. I’m reminiscing on my older sister’s memory. Rest in peace Corina.  

Emmett Phillips Bio

Emmett Phillips Jr. is a teaching artist and performer with a passion for uplifting youth and building community. He works as a Youth Navigator for Oakridge Neighborhood and provides creative art services such as curriculum building, workshop facilitation, and performances through his own business Speak Your Peace LLC.

DES MOINES SPEAKS

DSM Speaks are short audio reflections on artwork in our permanent collection, written and voiced by diverse members of our community. Contributors to this program were selected in partnership with CultureALL and the Des Moines Art Center. We hope by elevating these diverse ways of seeing we can encourage all visitors to connect more deeply and to see themselves and their identities within our walls.